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Borracho Premiere “Caravan” Lyric Video; New Album in Progress

Posted in Bootleg Theater on April 14th, 2022 by JJ Koczan

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Washington, D.C. riff-rollers Borracho issued their fourth full-length, Pound of Flesh (review here), in Aug. 2021 with the vinyl backing of the respected purveyors at Kozmik Artifactz. They have reportedly started work on the next one, and given the outward-looking bent of the lyrics throughout Pound of Flesh as showcased in “Caravan” and the prior single “It Came From the Sky” (premiered here; hey, I’m allowed to like bands), I have significant doubts the three-piece will have run out of topics for discussion.

The lyrics are a focal point for “Caravan” enough for there to be a lyric video, but one ignores the stretch of keyboard running alongside the nodder riff in the song’s second half at one’s own peril. As guitarist Steve Fisher belts out the hook “All hope is gone/Still we travel on” to cut straight to the heart of a refugee’s plight — as relevant to Ukraine now as to Syria, Mexico, Uyghurs in China, and so on, as it was when the song was written, human beings drowning in the Mediterranean, the Rio Grande, the Gulf of Mexico, fleeing violence and dying from exposure in an empty expanse or freezing on cold ground — yes, it’s a downer. This is not an uplifting track, not party rock. Grim ideas on a grim subject.

But it’s not doom, despite that, or exploiting this horror to serve its own ends. Rather, Borracho find a sonic context in which to tell the story — bassist Tim Martin and drummer Mario Trubiano so fluid in delivering on the band’s ongoing stated promise of ‘repetitive heavy grooves’ (which they should really copyright by now) — that’s not too overblown in its heft but backs the lyrics and vocals an engrossing fuzz and roll such that the nine-minute track feels decidedly shorter as the various effects-manipulated landscapes of “Caravan” proceed past, emphasizing the feeling of journeying, maybe being lost.

I don’t know if “Caravan” is the last single Borracho will highlight from Pound of Flesh, but if so, it’s welcome news to see confirmed below that they’re putting together ideas to move forward with a next outing. “Caravan” is a song that brings to mind the work Borracho have put in over the last decade-plus to become the band they are, and the immersive power their songs can have while remaining largely straightforward in structure.

Enjoy the clip:

Borracho, “Caravan” lyric video premiere

A cold desert. A stormy sea. A mountain range. A strange land. Violence. Conflict. Terrorism. Economic crisis. They flee for many reasons and brave many dangers for a better life. Wherever they come from, stand with refugees.

Caravan is the third single from the Borracho LP Pound of Flesh, out now on Kozmik Artifactz.

Order now at https://borracho.bandcamp.com

We haven’t seen too many stages lately, but we’ve been hard at work writing and recording our next album. Most of it has already been tracked, and it’ll be wrapped up in the next few months. No projected release info yet, but stay tuned! We may have a couple other tricks up our sleeve between now and then.

Borracho is:
Steve Fisher – Lead Guitar & Vocals
Tim Martin – Bass
Mario Trubiano – Drums

Borracho, Pound of Flesh (2021)

Borracho on Facebook

Borracho on Twitter

Borracho on Bandcamp

Borracho website

Kozmik Artifactz website

Kozmik Artifactz on Facebook

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Review & Full Album Stream: Borracho, Pound of Flesh

Posted in audiObelisk, Reviews on August 2nd, 2021 by JJ Koczan

borracho pound of flesh

[Click play above to stream Borracho’s Pound of Flesh in its entirety. Album is out Friday, Aug. 6 on Kozmik Artifactz.]

Though the band has been around longer, this year is a decade since the first Borracho full-length, Splitting Sky (review here), came out from D.C. to lobby listeners in favor of their particular take on heavy roll, marked out by a distinctive feel of riding their own grooves and doing so on a conveyance of dense-packed fuzz tone. Pound of Flesh follows a collaborative 2020 single with vocalist Jake Starr, formerly of Adam West — of which Borracho drummer Mario Trubiano was also a member — and is comprised of material and recordings dating back to late 2019, recorded and mixed as ever by Frank “The Punisher” Marchand (Foghound, Iron Man, Life Beyond, so many others) across three sessions then and across subsequent months (Tony Reed mastered). Trubiano, guitarist/vocalist Steve Fisher — who also adds keys on three of the nine tracks — and bassist/backing vocalist Tim Martin (who also painted the album’s cover) work within a style and elements that should be well familiar to their established audience base.

They’ve never been a band to radically shift approach from one outing to the next, but it’s also been half a decade since 2016’s Atacama (review here) — the band also celebrated their 10-year anniversary with the collection Riffography (review here) in 2017 — and a significant half-decade at that, and that time has wrought some shifts in their approach, whether it’s that flourish of keyboard/organ sounds introduced on opener “Holy Roller” and spread throughout “Caravan” and the 11-minute pre-outro finale “Burn it Down,” wherein Floyd-via-YOB contemplative guitar also pervades early with proggy melancholy as a precedent to the combination of aggression, breadth and thematic summary that follows, or the use of transitional samples like those between “Judgement Day” and “Dirty Money,” or those that conclude the album in “Foaming at the Mouth,” some spoken word in the second half of “Caravan,” or even just the blatant focus on social and political issues, which one imagines have been nigh on impossible to avoid in the US capitol throughout the years since Atacama, since they’ve certainly been impossible to avoid everywhere else.

Borracho tackle the subject with characteristic boldness and bruiser riffing across three vinyl sides — side D of the 2LP is an etching — as Fisher‘s vocals working with a well-established burl that’s been their hallmark since he took over those duties on 2013’s Oculus (review here). His easing into more of a frontman role is a big part of the narrative arc of the band’s career to-date, and the launch of Pound of Flesh in “Holy Roller” and the more melodically fluid “It Came From the Sky” (premiered here) is crucial in marking out the ground that the rest of what follows will cover; strong hooks, weighted groove, and the by-now-a-given chemistry in the performance of the trio as a whole that underscores the more complex structure presented in “Caravan.” It’s hard to think of a band who’ve spent the past 14 years actively working to foster a lack of pretense as being atmospheric, but Borracho are that on “Caravan,” and certainly too on the acoustic “Dreamer” that follows, serving as an interlude before “Judgement Day,” “Dirty Money” and “Year of the Swine” push further into the heart of the matter in their construction and lyrical schematic, which isn’t so much partisan as roundly disgusted.

Following the open keys, shouts, and fuzzy careening that marks the peak of “Caravan” and the stretch of Eastern-tinged noodling and percussion that follows to end the song, and the plucked acoustic strings of “Dreamer,” “Judgement Day” slams in to crack the hypnosis in half, with a riff and rhythm that is definitively Borrachoan, and a hook less immediate than “Holy Roller” or “It Came From the Sky,” but still a notable presence, and a surge of momentum that “Dirty Money” continues at a faster tempo, repeating the pattern of the opening duo but, instead of turning right away into the longer reach that showed itself on “Caravan,” the path twists and brings about “Year of the Swine,” which is willfully lumbering and gnashing in its frustration, bolstered in that regard by a guest solo from Scott “Wino” Weinrich.

borracho

It is the peak the three-piece hit before they hit before that frustration boils into what emerges on “Burn it Down,” the tension in the beginning building over the first 3:44 of the song’s total 11:24 in order to set up the first verse, which only ups the stakes further en route to gang-style shouts of “rise up!” and “tear down!” offsetting the chorus lines “Rise up and fight” and “Burn it to the ground.”

Well, okay. One has to note, of course, that “Burn it Down” was written and recorded prior to this past Jan. 6, when an attempted putsch in Washington, D.C., tried in its way to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. I’ll add as well that I haven’t had the benefit of a lyric sheet, but it’s hard not to place “Burn it Down” in that context. And no, I don’t think Fisher is calling for insurrection — or at least not that particular insurrection. Lines like, “Time to settle debts/We’re taking a pound of flesh,” certainly have an aspect of threat, never mind that they serve as the inspiration for the title, but the message, again, never comes through in favor of one side over the other so much as disaffected with a corrupted entirety. And fair enough. Twice through the chorus again, and “Burn it Down” jams out a solo en route to its bookending more subdued guitar, crying baby and evil cackle samples starting “Foaming at the Mouth” in beginning a sample onslaught — “Here comes the money!” from the beginning of “Dirty Money” makes a return — and the feeling of being overwhelmed is palpable.

Conspiracy theories, chemtrails, that crying baby and of course a riff-led groove all come to a finish just after two minutes in, and Pound of Flesh concludes with a sampling of the apex speech of Charlie Chaplin’s 1940 anti-fascist “talkie” film The Great Dictator, wrapping with the repositioned line that begins that famous monologue: “I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an emperor. That’s not my business.” The message is clear and relevant and gives depth and context not only to the purposefully overwhelming barrage meant to represent the overwhelming barrage of noise one faces in any given day, but also to “Burn it Down,” to “Judgement Day,” “It Came From the Sky” and the rest of what surrounds. Borracho could hardly have picked a more suitable or relevant capstone for the album they made.

And what impresses about Pound of Flesh on the whole isn’t just that FisherMartin and Trubiano made it, but that they pulled it off while still holding to that central sans-pretense ethic. Remember, this is the band whose slogan has only ever been ‘Repetitive Heavy Grooves,’ and yet they dig deeper here to offer much more than that on every level, from shifts in structure and tempo to new arrangement elements. In the span of the last decade, all Borracho have ever done is exceed expectation. It is the manner in which they are most reliable, and on Pound of Flesh, they deliver once more.

Borracho, “Holy Roller” official video

Borracho on Facebook

Borracho on Twitter

Borracho on Bandcamp

Borracho website

Kozmik Artifactz website

Kozmik Artifactz on Facebook

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Borracho Set Aug. 6 Release for Pound of Flesh; Preorder Available

Posted in Whathaveyou on June 28th, 2021 by JJ Koczan

borracho

I know, I know, a double-LP is all cool and stuff, and two vinyl versions and that’s pretty special. But a jewel case CD with a four-panel insert? That’s got me grinning like the Drake meme. My jam. And a jewel case feels like a novelty at this point, so yeah, I’m on board for that.

Aug. 6 is the release date for Borracho‘s fourth album, Pound of Flesh, and considering the fact that it marks a decade since their debut, you almost have to sit back and look at the career they’ve put together. Especially since they didn’t end up being the band they started as, losing their frontman after that first record, their accomplishments are all the more impressive. And you know what? They’ve earned everything they’ve gotten, working with labels like Ripple Music, Cursed Tongue and Kozmik Artifactz, shows at home and abroad, fest appearances, wide-ranging accolades and all of it. Solid heavy rock and roll band. I’ve heard the new record. It’s long, but they earn that too. It’s awesome, and it’s another step forward for them.

I guess what I’m saying is “fucking a, new Borracho.” I’m gonna try to get one of these dudes on board for a video interview before the record’s out too, and there’ll be a review and all that whatnot, so keep an eye out. We’ve got time.

Here’s preorder info:

borracho pound of flesh

BORRACHO – New LP Pound of Flesh available August 6. Pre-order NOW!

Our 4th record Pound of Flesh officially drops August 6th and is available for pre-order on CD, digital, and vinyl now on our Bandcamp page: https://borracho.bandcamp.com/

Nine new tracks running more than 50 minutes will take you on a heavy trip from beginning to end. Here’s the first glimpse at the cover art and packaging, all designed by TMD – AKA our very own Tim Martin.

CDs are presented in jewel cases with full color 4-panel insert. But the stars of the show are the two vinyl versions. Two limited edition gatefold 2LP versions are available – Black & Blue, and special edition Multicolor Splatterburst. Side 4 includes a custom etching capturing various elements of the album’s theme. It’s a package you don’t want to miss in your collection. Pre-order NOW!

Pound of Flesh arrives nearly five years after its predecessor Atacama, and just on time for the tenth anniversary of our debut album Splitting Sky. It has been a labor of love, being largely written over a three year period when the band was geographically separated, and mostly recorded ahead of the onset of a global pandemic. The events of the past 16 months delayed its completion and release even further. We couldn’t be happier to finally bring you this amazing package, presented by the always on-point Kozmik Artifactz.

NOTE: if you are located in Europe we highly recommend you place your pre-order directly with Kozmik Artifactz for faster and cheaper delivery.

https://www.facebook.com/pg/BorrachoDC/
http://twitter.com/borracho_DC
https://borracho.bandcamp.com/
http://www.borrachomusic.com/
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https://www.facebook.com/kozmikartifactz/
http://shop.bilocationrecords.com/

Borracho, “It Came From the Sky” official video premiere

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Borracho Premiere “It Came From the Sky” Video; Pound of Flesh out Early 2021

Posted in Bootleg Theater on September 28th, 2020 by JJ Koczan

borracho

As they mark the 10-year anniversary of their debut in 2021, Washington D.C. heavy rolling trio Borracho will also release their covid-delayed fourth full-length, Pound of Flesh. Also their second for Kozmik Artifactz, the new Borracho follows some four-plus years on from 2016’s Atacama (review here) and is prefaced by the new video for “It Came From the Sky.” And if the premise of an upcoming Borracho record isn’t immediately enticing, plug your brain into the clip for just long enough to hear guitarist Steve Fisher‘s fuzz riff and that should be more than enough to prick up your ears.

I’m not sure who recorded the thing, and I’m not sure how representative “It Came From the Sky” might be of what surrounds it across the whole of the LP, because I haven’t heard it yet, but Fisher and bassist/backing vocalist Tim Martin conjure up some enviable tonality, and set to Mario Trubiano‘s steady-as-she-goes-and-she-goes-pretty-damn-steady drums, you’re basically getting a lesson in how to do heavy fuzz correctly in 2020.

For Borracho, “It Came From the Sky” also represents something of a turn toward the socially conscious. Can’t argue. Lines like the song’s hook, “What do you want?/What do you want from me?/Whatever happened to the land of the free?/Fear. Control. Fear.,” put emphasis on the paranoia of our age, and the song digs into conspiracy theories and the abiding sense of something having shifted in the reality in which we live. The last runthrough of the chorus, in fact, switches out “the land of the free” for “reality,” in a clever twist that works well rhythmically. You’ll also note that, in the video, all three members of the band are shown speaking various lines throughout, underscoring the notion of their speaking as a group.

And if you missed it above, Borracho hail from the epicenter of alternate-universe-ism that is the American capitol city, Washington “Taxation Without Representation” D.C. I cannot for the life of me imagine what the air in that town might smell like at this point, but as the US moves inexorably toward a presidential election that has the potential to either reinforce or undermine our shown-to-be-oh-so-fragile system of government, it’s only fair that politics, social issues, and so forth should be on Borracho‘s mind. For those of you who might live elsewhere in the world, you’d have to work really, really hard to ignore it otherwise.

With the promise of more to come, enjoy the premiere of “It Came From the Sky” — filmed in isolation I would guess by the band themselves and skillfully edited together by Larry Jackson, Jr. (also of Wasted Theory) — below, followed by some quick confirmation from the band about the record coming out, double-vinyl style.

Dig:

Borracho, “It Came From the Sky” official video premiere

From the forthcoming album Pound of Flesh, coming in early 2021 on Kozmik Artifactz heavyweight 2LP, CD and digital.

Borracho on Thee Facebooks

Borracho on Bandcamp

Borracho website

Kozmik Artifactz website

Kozmik Artifactz on Thee Facebooks

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